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Henriette Lennox, 1702
The Duchess of Avon had never loved her husband’s seat the way he did. When he had been courting her, Rudolph had described the great beauties of his country home, the glories of the scenery, a perfect setting for the jewel he would take as his bride.
He had forgotten to mention the rain—or perhaps thought that, born in England, his bride would remember it. Now, almost a decade the Duchess of Avon, Henriette twitched her shoulders irritably as she paced the dark halls between each pool of candlelight, and listened to the endless beating of the rain against the walls and windows, a curtain between her and the world.
It seemed to have been raining ever since the news had come that the King had fallen from his horse. That the King was going to die, not in the fullness of time, but near immediately.
That news had, naturally, been followed by Rudolph’s intimates, his friends and allies, come to plot the beginning of a new reign. All men, of course, sitting at her table and pretending they cared for her opinions, before she went away and the real discussion could begin.
“What do you think of the Duchess of Gloucester?” one of them had asked, and before she could give her answer—that Anne was ruled by her favourites, and incapable of sticking to a position for more than a few days at a time, especially if that position no longer suited her—the conversation had moved on.
Unfortunately, it had moved on with a suggestion that Rudolph might write to Lord Sheringham for the latest news, from some fool who had forgotten that Rudolph had never forgiven his sister Ursula for marrying one of Dutch William’s favourites, and still less forgiven Simon Verelst for remarrying after Ursula had taken the smallpox at the deathbed of Queen Mary. By the time Rudolph had been calmed, the last of the dinner was removed, and Henriette had gone to check on her children and leave the men to their port, and their pipes, and their endless chatter, which seemed to echo like the rain.
It was, if anything, louder in the nursery. Little Charlotte was sleeping, her covers kicked off, unconscious of the cold that Henriette could feel despite the fire that smouldered sullenly behind a screen. In her own cell, the nursemaid - a solid country girl who stared at the floor when Henriette spoke to her, and had avoided her confessor as though he had a forked tongue - snored loudly.
There were two beds in the little room off the main nursery, where the door lay half open, so that they could see the glow of the banked fire. One of them was empty, and Justin looked up, with a breath of shame, when Henriette came into view, Dominic snoring faintly at his side. Henriette ignored the pair of them, going to straighten Charlotte’s covers, and resting her candlestick on the mantle. Charlotte sniffed, and attempted to kick the covers off again, until Henriette had them firmly tucked in around the featherbed. Charlotte was distressingly like her father, sometimes.
When she straightened, Justin was giving her a very straight and honest look, which meant that he felt guilty for not going to sleep when told to do so. A candle burnt low on the small table between his bed, and Dominic’s empty one. They had been moved into the little ante room when Charlotte left her cradle, which now rested in the attics, awaiting the next tenant. Henriette wondered vaguely if she would be expected to name a boy George, for Anne's husband, or if they might get away with Henry, or Gervase, for Rudolph’s father and brother. No doubt she should hope for a girl. She moved into the little room, where Justin was pretending he didn’t wish to yawn.
“Sleep, mon caneton,” she said, and leaned down to kiss his forehead, and remove the book from his unprotesting grasp. “You can read tomorrow. Unless the rain slackens, there will be little else for you to do.” Justin, well trained, did not try to protest, recognising the concession of being allowed to sleep with Dominic in his bed much as Henriette had once slept with a puppy. The book was Machiavelli, Henriette's own translated copy, which she had used to try and improve her English. She laid it on the mantel, and then, candle in hand, went back to kiss the boys again. Dominic mumbled sleepily. Justin had screwed his eyes closed, willing himself back to sleep, and she closed the door behind her, shutting out Dominic’s soft noises, the maid’s snoring. Her own rooms lay below, towards the front of the house. Henriette didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to lie in her bed, cold and lonely, waiting for Rudolph to come up, to sleep and face another day just like today, worrying at her thoughts like a terrier with a rat, trying to push down her anger so that it would not spill over. She could be calm with the children, who had done nothing but be born, and be children. It was not so easy to be calm about her husband’s ambitions.
She raised her candle, and met the dark, secretive eyes of her father-in-law’s first wife, painted at the time of her marriage, the spring before the Civil War began. Beside her, her two daughters looked out sulkily, immortalised by Lely with their bosoms falling out of their gowns.
Henriette had always been very grateful indeed that she had never been required to live with any of Rudolph’s sisters. His mother, who had been completely incapable of expressing an opinion on anything except embroidery, had gladly relinquished the household, and gone off to live with her married daughters before dying, as quietly as she had lived, shortly before Dominic was born. Many of Henriette’s friends, with mothers-in-law of their own sat like loathsome toads upon the family jewels and plate, wrote of how they envied Henriette her freedom. Much of the time, Henriette agreed with them, but on nights like tonight, she would have welcomed even Margaret’s silent presence. Her confessor had sadly informed her, a few weeks ago, that he must return to France. It was not safe to be a Jesuit in a land where the King was dying, and men spat upon Papists.
Her tiring woman was waiting in her chamber, hovering uncertainly, and pretending not to yawn as she fumbled at Henriette’s laces, helped her into her nightrail, and left, shutting the door very firmly behind her.
The bed was warm, even if the windows rattled, and there was a chill in the air, not all attributable to the weather. Henriette lay back, and did not even try to sleep.
She could not remember ever meeting her brother Monmouth, twenty-eight years her senior. Still, she had wept herself to sleep for a week when she heard of his fate on Tower Hill, how Jack Ketch had taken eight blows to sever his head from his shoulders.
Nine years later, she had married the fair and smiling Duke of Avon, the ghost of the holy innocents in her silks and laces just like her unlucky aunt and namesake, and sailed back to England with unwarranted confidence.
Even here, in Avon, the heart of Rudolph’s lands, she was tolerated at best. Her mother had not been the Protestant whore. London was better, but still, she sometimes longed for the chiming bells of Saint-Pierre, for the sound of familiar words, and none who frowned at an absent-minded sign of the cross. Charlotte had been conceived during a sojourn in Versailles, and Henriette sometimes thought the joy had infected her in the womb, far more than serious Justin, and loving Dominic.
She sat up, and thumped her bolster. The dog who was curled around the other end whined reproachfully, and she reached over to have her fingers licked. That done, he departed down the bed in dudgeon, to lie on her feet, and she settled again.
The annoyance she had suppressed during dinner was rising once more in her throat. None of them wanted her thoughts, no matter what they might say, all of them determined to go their own way.
Rudolph came to bed with his nightcap firmly on, to disguise the expansion of his forehead, and stowed his candle holder in its accustomed place. When he leaned over to kiss her, he smelt of dark port, and woody tobacco, and Henriette prodded the relegated hound with one foot, so that it moved and left him space to get into bed, pressing cold feet between her legs. No doubt it was being English that meant he was so cold.
"If we can persuade Anne to meet her brother," he started, as any number of hypotheticals downstairs had no doubt begun, as if she’d heard it all-- but then, she had, or knew it well enough.
"He's not fifteen until the summer," she said, "And if you press Anne too hard, she will remember it was she who told Mary that he was no brother of hers at all. She changed her mind then, and again when she promised the King she would seek the restoration of his line, she can change it again. At least they never changed their minds, we can give them that."
"God rot her," Rudolph grumbled. "And every--well."
Henriette swallowed, and then ran a hand over the bony knobs of his shoulder. “There’s time,” she said, “Time for him to prove himself a man and a Stuart, time for Sophia and her son to blot their copybooks, time for that poor cow in Celle to die, for Anne--”
More than a year since Anne’s last child had been born dead. She was thirty-seven. All things were possible.
They were not likely, though. And the Electress and her son were far more concerned with Prussia, where her daughter had married, and their own domestic troubles. If young James could prove himself a Stuart, in the way of her father and not of his, then he might be able to take and hold, to demonstrate his eminent suitability. But not now, not this early. God, if only Rudolph could be made to see it! If only he could be convinced that this was no time to raise the Alastairs in rebellion, with no space to make two camps of them, not if one camp was to be led by his brother Edmund, vacillating and pusillanimous, whose only show of character had been marrying Jane Paske in the teeth of all objections-- for reasons which had become clear when little Harriet came along six months later.
“Anne,” Rudolph said heavily, and rested a hand on her belly, the slight firm rise.
“Katrine is with child again,” she told him, recalling her sister’s most recent letter, urgent news amongst carefully couched fears. “With little Angélique not even a year old, too.”
“Disgraceful,” Rudolph agreed.
“I thought I might go and visit her,” Henriette said slowly, and added, “With the children.”
“Would you go to St Germain?” he asked immediately.
“No,” Henriette said shortly. “No, I would not.”
Rudolph nodded slowly. “I would miss you, if you went,” he said, “But if you feel it safer--”
Henriette nodded silently, and let him hold her.
Léonie de St Vire, 1749
Léonie had always enjoyed remembering her triumphs. It was in many ways one of her favourite things, after the day had passed, to describe to Monseigneur what she had done, and who she had seen, and what she had contrived.
When they had returned home, dawn had touched the canals, lighting them in glimmers of pink and gold. Now the rising sun was shut out of the extravagance of their bedroom by wooden shutters, and thick velvet curtains--Léonie's own travelling set, and Léonie snuggled into the depths of her blankets, and pillows and featherbed, entirely comfortable, and recalled the events of the night.
“I thought the Conte Raversi most attentive, enfin!” she said, “But his wife, faugh, she speaks only of the great sorrows caused by her son! It is too much to bear.”
“What would you do, if Dominic should grow such?” Justin asked lazily.
“I would not lament, and weep like a willow! I should chastise him! But he would not, I hope, for we should teach him better.”
It was, of course, true that one’s children did not always grow as one wanted: she had only to look at little John Marling, who had grown from a small boy who pressed clumsily-picked flowers upon her and eyed Justin as a godlike being, and Rupert as a perfect playmate, to an adolescent who was more serious even than his father and rather less humourous, and who Leonie had been much relieved to leave behind when they had left the country.
She would have been still more relieved if they had left earlier, but that had not been her choice.
“The gossip!” she remarked, and yawned a little into her hand. “A surprising amount is of England, enfin! And some, I am sure, was about me, though I am not sure what they said.”
She had thought Hugh asleep, tucked up behind her husband’s back in his accustomed place. Unlike Léonie, he had somehow found the energy to hang his gown and petticoats neatly, ruefully rejecting Justin’s interest in his disrobing, while Léonie fell half-clothed into the bed. Now, he rubbed Justin’s side, and shifted, the bed moving beneath him.
"Someone confided in me that you are Jack Carstares," he remarked. "I blame you, of course, Justin. They believe that you are entirely responsible for his vanishing."
"They have once again confused me with Andover," Justin informed his pillow.
"Bah," said Léonie, "You are far more handsome!"
"I fear the world does not share our opinion," Hugh remarked, giving Justin a consolatory pat on the side, which he ignored. Léonie gave in, and turned over to look at them both, Hugh’s head resting at the back of Justin’s shoulder.
“What are you thinking, mignonne?” Hugh asked fondly, and Léonie arched over to kiss his cheek.
She had not been entirely surprised, when she had realised that Hugh and Monseigneur had once been lovers. She had not been entirely the ignorant infant. She had seen that Hugh had withdrawn from the hôtel, and when she had run him to ground at a soiree, he had told her with entirely unnecessary kindness that he had felt himself de trop in the home of a newly married couple. Still, it had not been until she had been expecting Dominic that she had realised entirely what they were to each other, and not until she was a year a mother that she had asked Justin whether he had ended matters with Hugh because of her.
“No,” he had said, “No, well--not entirely.” They had sat together, Léonie resting her head upon his shoulder, until he spoke again. “Before you put your skirts on once more, he said that he thought it would be--foolish, to continue. I had told him once that we had played the games of boys together. He said that at last, I was a man, to put away childish things, and then he kissed me.”
Looking at the two men together, curled into each other, Léonie thought that Hugh had been the fool, to abandon Monseigneur for such a reason, when they had known each other since they were boys in truth.
She had no one from before she was the Duchess of Avon, since the Curé de Beaupré had died. She had affection for Armand, certainly, and both that and pity for her poor mother, who had retreated from the world into a convent, where she could entirely forget Henri de Saint-Vire. Her Tante Françoise, who her husband had once paid court to--well. The Duchesse de Belcour seemed to think of that time as a distant amusement, and not the beginning of an enmity that had destroyed her brother. Léonie could not find it in herself to more than tolerate her.
She had not truly understood the depth of the Alastairs until after she had married. Mistress Field-- Cousin Harriet, now, spoke of their long-gone triumphs with pride. Of their more recent antecedents, she had been silent. Léonie had learnt of the existence of Justin’s aunt Lady Dalrymple when introduced to her at a ball, and met her eyes, and seen Fanny grown old. Lady Dalrymple, however, had shown no interest in her new niece, merely smiled, and passed on. Léonie, pressing Fanny, had learnt that Lady Dalrymple had a twin sister, and the two of them an elder sister, all still living. The Alastairs were not so small a family as they seemed, merely a family who held no interest in one another. The man who lay in the succession after Rupert, a slightly more distant cousin, had never been to Avon. There were no happy family gatherings among the Alastairs, even of the kind that took place among the Saint Vires, where Armand and Tante Françoise worked out their old grudges over chess, while her great-uncle the bishop got increasingly drunk and mused over how nothing had been the same since Minister Colbert had died.
As for his mother’s family, Justin barely spoke of them. He had affection for his late grandmere, the Duchesse d’Aubigny, and fondness for his Tante Katrine, the Duchesse de Maugry, and her many children, twice royal on the wrong side of the blanket. Katrine and Henriette had, however, been but two of the Merry King’s bastards, and there was as much family feeling among them as could be found in a nest of snakes. The dice that would determine their fates had long been cast, for and against the Stuarts, for and against the Hanovers-- for, largely, one’s self. Justin had placed his hopes in his Maman’s cousin, the Old Pretender, and had found nothing there to sustain him.
They had kept well clear of the Bonnie Prince, a fool and a drunk, now in Luneville nursing his lost expectations. She had found him most romantic, but with the power of a king? Non. She loved her adopted country too well to take him as a King. Perhaps one day he would have a son--or there was the Prince of Wales, if he could make of himself more than a man who opposed his father and bullied his wife. The nation had come so close to tearing itself apart, and the reprisals had been so terrible, that neither she nor Justin would countenance taking up arms once more.
Justin had waited to leave the country until he had seen Lovat to the block. He had attended the execution himself, dressed in faultless midnight black, and she had attended beside him, in a gown of such dark blue that you only saw it was not black when the light fell upon it.
She thought, she hoped, that Lovat had seen Justin.
Dominic had been at Avon, with Rupert and the Merivale boys, and had not seen any of it. Whatever he knew was a story, almost a fairy tale.
Once they left England, it had not been so bad a journey. They had come to Venice for Christmas, and settled in a rented Palazzo which Gaston had swiftly brought under his command. Christmas had been spent hearing assurances that this was nothing, nothing compared to Carnivale season.
Dominic was learning some extremely idiomatic and dialectic Italian, which would be useless when they got as far as Florence, let alone Rome, and which Hugh had said would probably confuse him terribly at Eton. Leonie could travel as she chose: clad as a man, or a woman. By day, she fenced with Justin, and at night they danced together.
She looked at her husband, stretched out on the bed, and her husband’s lover, who had disposed himself comfortably, and was truly asleep this time, and felt, as she so often did, that she might truly burst with joy.
“I am very happy,” she said simply, and Justin drew her down into a kiss.
Mary Challoner, 1774
The Marchioness of Vidal had conceived a violent longing for her bed around the time her mother, on one of her too-regular morning calls, had triumphantly informed her that her sister Sophia’s baronet was at last coming up to scratch.
Mary had indeed heard that the wealthy and elderly Sir Brabazon Fotherby was to lower himself to wed a demimondaine, a former actress rumoured to have at least one bastard to her credit. She had known it was two, their arrivals having been announced by Mrs Challoner in succession. No doubt Sophia had heard of the advent of her own four in the same fashion. Mary had never met her niece and nephew, and had no intention that Sophia should meet hers. She would have been perfectly happy to forget her sister, but for her Mama.
Unfortunately, at some point in every visit, Mrs Challoner’s conversation would settle upon Sophia. Mary had heard of her theatrical triumphs, the suitors she had entertained, the children she had borne without the benefit of clergy. Her mother could not seem to take pleasure in Mary’s accomplishments, but her eyes gleamed with pride when she related that one of Sophia’s gentlemen had bought her a carriage, or presented her with a necklace of brilliant diamonds. Mary had tried very hard to forget the names of men she might one day meet, and thank God that Sophia had gone on the stage as Sophia Wycherly.
Dominic had been absent as usual when Mrs Challoner had arrived, but instead of his normal pursuits, he had spent the day brangling at the Marlings.The whole family had been thrown into confusion at the discovery that John Marling's well-known sense of family duty did not encompass the daughter he had fathered on a trip to Madras some years previously. Lady Fanny had taken the girl in as soon as she reached England, sent on by helpful missionaries after her mother's death, but John was proving chary about providing a financial settlement, and Dominic, father of two hopeful daughters, had volunteered to sit on him while Frederick Comyn read a lecture. Mary could only be grateful for his absence, as he might otherwise have vented his spleen at his mother-in-law. The whole matter had fallen on his shoulders, as his parents were away in Vichy, where Mr Davenant was taking the waters. Worse, Dominic had known John for a prosy bore and a prig, but he had not thought him a dishonourable hypocrite. Mary suspected it had hurt him more than he was willing to admit, to find that John thought it acceptable to abandon his daughter first in India and now in London. She had been prepared to welcome him home with comfort, fed and washed children, and her open ear. Instead, she had been as annoyed as him.
Her mother had admired the children, and lavishly distributed unsuitable gifts. The only exception had been Reinette, who was offended to have been left behind by her parents, and was not Mrs Challoner's granddaughter besides. Mrs Challoner had, in one of her flashes of perspicacity, brought little Julia a set of crayons. Julia, overjoyed, but not overseen, had begun to scrawl on the nearest piece of paper, which was, unfortunately, her Mama’s unread copy of the Spectator. She had not been discovered until after Mrs Challoner had left, forcing kisses on Mary, Giles, Eleanor and Julia, though not on little Rupert, who had previously bitten her.
On discovering Julia’s crimes, Mary had returned her to the nursery, then sat down with a pot of coffee, to be greeted by the housekeeper with a domestic crisis attributable to the new chef. This personage was French, and causing inexplicable ructions below stairs. Mary's French, though very good, was defeated by his particular idiom, and she had retired upstairs fearing a dinner of cold cuts instead of the planned three courses, with removes, and Dominic’s favourite shape for dessert. They had at least been spared that, but Dominic had returned with Juliana Comyn as an unexpected guest.
“I was to dine with Mama,” Juliana had explained, kissing her cheek, “but so is John, and I’ve already thrown a shoe at him, and I didn’t want to scare Little Fan - that’s what we’re calling her, for she does have Mama’s nose, or no doubt John would be even more dreadful. And I’d already told the cook we’d be dining out and Frederick had to go into the Treasury, some poor lamb’s got into a muddle with the tally sticks.”
After that, despite Mary’s best efforts, the conversation had largely centred around the iniquities of John, and what was to be done about him, and for that matter the new Mrs Marling, with a brief diversion into Small Dominic’s possible case of the measles, which had turned out to be a rash due to sleeping in wool. Juliana had left, kissing both of Mary’s cheeks, and Dominic’s. She had still been a little pale with rage, mouth falling into a downturn as she descended the steps to the waiting hackney.
Giles had gone to bed with his new cricket bat, a gift from Mrs Challoner, but Dominic passed him by briefly, along with Rupert in his own bed, turned onto one side like a dormouse. He spent far longer looking at Ella and Julia, identically flat on their backs, hair in a pair of neat plaits, and Mary had rested her head on his shoulder, and put an arm around him. No doubt, in the house in Curzon Street, their new cousin slept just the same, without a father to watch, and brush the end of a plait away from her mouth.
They went to their own bed in silence. Timms knew Dominic well enough not to make more than the required conversation, and Mary’s own abigail had been a wide eyed witness to the disorder of the day. Once they were settled, Dominic reached for her, and Mary tucked herself along his side. It was no good to push Dominic, not when he was in a thinking mood. She could still comfort herself with the rhythm of his breathing, and lay her hand on his chest, waiting for him to speak.
"She's very young," Dominic said quietly. "Little Fan. Just the same age as Julia. She draws as well, I saw her. Aunt Fanny thinks she might have had tutors in Madras.”
They had been discussing providing Julia with a drawing master, someone to channel her urge to draw, and shape the talent that Mary could already tell outstripped hers. She drew decently. Julia had an eye, a skill for shape and colour that brought resemblances in just a few swift pencil strokes.
Fan must be the age Mary had been when her father had died. What did she remember? Snatches of weeping. Clinging to Sophia in confusion. Her mother sitting up with reddened eyes to compose a letter to General Challoner. A few weeks in her aunt’s well-ordered home, before Mrs Challoner had found new rooms of her own.
Mary had had her mother, her sister, and the horde of Simpkinses. Fan had a father she must barely remember, and a grandmother she had never met. It was even odds whether Lady Fanny’s love would please her or terrify her.
Mary wondered if, when Lady Fanny looked at her granddaughter, she remembered her own childhood. She never spoke of anything before she had bloomed among the haut ton. It was from casual comments by Lord Rupert, a few careful phrases from Mr Davenant, that Mary had gathered images of privation and loss, etched in by the tombs dated 1713 that ran down the west side of the chancel in the pretty little church at Avon. Four tombs and five memorials, for Lady Fanny and Lord Rupert's parents - the inscrutable third Duke of Avon and his haughty dark-eyed Duchess, who Dominic so resembled - had been buried together.
That child, those children, needed succour. So had Mary--and Mrs Challoner had done her best, wretched and selfish as it was.
So did little Frances Marling the younger.
“Of course she must share the girls’ lessons,” Mary said firmly, “I had been thinking of asking Juliana if the girls might share their governesses. It does them no good to be in restricted society, and they are far enough apart in age that separation in their lessons might do them good.”
She wasn't going to send them to school, the way her sons were going to Eton, but to share lessons with their cousins--that could be managed.
“That would be nice,” Dominic agreed, and stroked her hair, down the length of her plait, to her hip, where his hand rested.
“I’m told your mother was here this afternoon,” Dominic said, making an effort to change the subject. “Complaining about her pin money?”
“Oh, to tell me Sophia’s marrying,” Mary said, following his lead. She wondered what the bride and the bride’s Mama would wear, and how many would attend the no doubt ill-starred ceremony--but it was too late to worry about Sophia now. It had been since she'd wed Dominic.
Most nights, that stopped her from lying awake worrying. On nights when it didn't, she had Dominic.
“I could visit Sophia, I suppose. Tell her to stop playing games with Fotherby. I daresay I could find her direction.”
“She’d laugh in your face,” Mary sighed. “Besides. If she does choose to be respectable, then I suppose it’s for the best. And a man of Fotherby’s age must know what marriage to her will be like.”
It would probably be good for her children, as well, though her mother hadn’t discussed that.
“You think she’d laugh at me?” Dominic sounded almost offended.
“Yes,” Mary said, “Of course she would. She’ll feel no need to be agreeable.” Dominic had not offered to pay Sophia an allowance, after all.
“She never used to--” Dominic started, and then subsided before she could point out that Sophia making an effort to charm and Sophia going about her daily life were entirely different beasts.
“Wretched,” Dominic grumbled, “The lot of them.”
“At least I have you,” Mary told him, and pressed a kiss to his bristled chin.
Georgiana Cheviot, 1790
Georgiana wished she had never come to Avon Court, her husband's parents be damned. When Giles had proposed the visit a few weeks ago, to demonstrate to his parents that they had not yet abandoned Robert and George in a nearby fox earth, Georgiana had acquiesced. She might as well be miserable in a place she heartily disliked, around people whose opinions she did not care for in particular. But it had been a deeper laceration than she thought, accepting sympathies from Giles's parents who had never liked her mother or brother. They had not mentioned the death of Eleanor Frant, banished alike from society and England after her abandonment of the Earl of St Erth and their baby son - not as all-pervasive a scandal as her elopement with Lord Lethbridge had been, but still common report in London. That was no doubt the sort of scandal which would not come to the Alastair table. Instead they came up with milk and water pleasantries, as if Georgiana didn't know the Duke had called her brother a fortune hunter, and the Duchess found her mother not a serious woman, and she listened to them talk at dinner and knew she would never again exchange chatty, disrespectful letters with Eleanor or Lionel, getting tales of the newest indignity heaped by the respectable on the wicked Lady St Erth or the latest skirmish between Lionel's wife and her sister in return.
Instead, they provided their sympathy, and Georgiana smiled brilliantly at them, and resolved not to let them see her unhappy. She suspected she was failing, and that they felt sorry for her, and that she could not abide. Giles’s sister Ella tried to cosset her, and Julia treated her like an invalid, when what she really wanted was a distraction.
The Dowager Duchess had proposed a series of bracing rides, but it seemed all of a piece that, for the first time, Georgiana's precautions had failed her. George would be followed by a brother or sister just over a year younger than he, the same as the gap between Georgiana herself and her brother Lionel. Anything more than plodding along on some sort of equine sofa was out of the question. There had been two miscarriages, in the five years between Robert and George, one late enough that the child was quickening. It seemed monstrously unfair that she should be expecting now, both to her, and to the child who would come into a world empty of three of the people it's mother had loved best, and Georgiana had tried not to think of that while she turned the Dowager down, pretending not to notice the spark of understanding in the Dowager’s eyes, and the way her gaze had turned to Georgiana’s midriff.
Her mother-in-law had asked if Georgiana would like her own room to attend to her correspondence. It was true that Georgiana had letters, piles of them, from the lawyers who had still been settling the Andover estate when her mother had died, from dear old Fox, whose handwriting wavered more and more, from the candidates she had intended to help--and here she was, confined to the domestic sphere, to receive sympathy and understanding and be cossetted. It made her want to spit. She had accepted the room, and laid her letters out there, divided between the various matters she needed to attend to, and how necessary they were. Her mother had taught her that, and Georgiana had spent a great deal of time trying to remind herself of the other things her mother had taught her.
After she and Giles had said they were to be wed, the Duchess of Avon had come to persuade Lady Dorothea to put the match off, and had no satisfaction. Georgiana, banished upstairs, had paced and wrung her hands until Lionel asked if she was to take to the stage, and Hal brought her a glass of ratafia, and then, finally, the butler had brought word that her Grace was gone and her ladyship awaited Miss Georgiana in the drawing room.
Dorothea had been almost entirely confined to her sopha, by then, using it to marshal her limited strength, and Georgiana had knelt by her knees, and said "Did you agree?"
"I agreed to many things," her mother had said, and tousled Georgiana's carefully arranged hair. "But none of the things she wanted. I agreed that you are both young, and strong in your feelings, and that it is the duty of your elders to guide you, and that, I explained, is why I shall consult my Papa and his solicitors."
Georgiana had not, in all honesty, believed that the Duchess would persuade her mother to forbid the banns, or at least delay the marriage in the hope that one of them would get bored, but she had still rested her head against the soft drapery of the sopha to hide the tears of relief that came to her eyes.
"Mary Avon is far too used to being the sensible one," Lady Dorothea had added. "I daresay you will do her good. Don't let any of them shout you down. They seem to be shouters."
She hadn't, until tonight.
She had already been halfway to a temper when they arrived at Avon Court. Before she left London, there had been a horrible interview with Eleanor's mother Lady Penistone, where Georgiana had realised, abruptly, that her ladyship held Georgiana responsible for it all - as if Georgiana had tucked Eleanor into bed with Lord Lethbridge herself, instead of merely seeking Eleanor's happiness, watching her bloom again like a flower in the sun under Lord Lethbridge's sincere admiration.
"She was happy," Georgiana had said at the end.
"She has died," Lady Penistone responded harshly, and there was no answer to that, and Georgiana had gone out to the carriage with her eyes kept dry by sheer force of will. After that there had been another letter from Hal, one that meandered around the fact that their father, his unfailing prop of an invalid wife removed, was collapsing in on himself, offended that she had actually died. They would have to do something. They were the only ones left who could, but the truth was that Henry Cheviot had never endeared himself to his children enough that either of the survivors welcomed the idea of his setting up residence with them. He was too used to being master of his home. There had also been an even less welcome letter from Lionel's widow, who Georgiana would have to keep sweet if she wanted to see little Eustace. It had led Georgiana to develop a headache in the carriage, one bad enough that Giles had taken little Robert up onto his pommel, while George and his nursery-maid rode in the carriage behind, and Georgiana sat with her face against a window to avoid shooting the cat. That had at least given her the excuse to stay in her chamber for the first evening, gathering her resources for the visit ahead.
She had not gathered them enough.
They had all been at luncheon, after a morning where the children had been paraded for admiration. Georgiana was becoming more and more reconciled to the usefulness of children. One cared for one’s own, of course, and the children of those one loved, but taken as a whole, they were detestably sticky, and prone to making unexpected noises. Still, they had spent an agreeable morning watching Robert tussle with his Tremaine and de Saint Vire cousins on the lawn, joined by their Uncle Rupert. Lord and Lady Merivale had come to visit, bring their own children: a stout boy, and a daughter who slept throughout in a basket. The Dowager and Georgiana between them had ensured that Lady Merivale had not asked Julia too many questions about when they might expect a contribution to the Jettan nursery. Julia had done Georgiana the courtesy of asking no questions about her own plans, and Georgiana felt it was the least she could do in return.
The Merivales had gone home for their own luncheon, and the Alastairs had gone to theirs, the children removed to be scrubbed and changed into clothing that wasn’t marked with grass and mud. Georgiana’s stomach had done her the courtesy of not roiling at the arrival of the cold and potted meats. They had even been joined by the men, before they went for a ride-- the Duke wished to discuss fences with Sir Thomas, and had been obliged to invite Giles. The table had been laid with flowers from the Duchess’s own garden, and Giles, seated by the nectarines, had kept Georgiana supplied with them in a constant stream.
It was Rupert, normally Georgiana's closest ally amongst the family, who had waved his fork absently--the Duchess had sighed-- and said, “I heard you were at Meering before London, Giles? I’m surprised Lord Rule lets Lethbridge in the house. Still, at least you can be sure Georgiana won’t be such a fool as to run off with him.”
She had laid her knife down then, carefully, but she had not been able to block out his words. “--hear St Erth’s relieved not to pay for a bill of divorcement, the old nipcheese. He’s using it to marry Dewbury’s eldest instead. At least she won’t lead him such a dance.”
At least Georgiana hadn’t sworn at him. She had called him a fool, certainly. She had cast doubt upon his ideas of wit, and his understanding of Society. Then she had stormed away, leaving the debris behind her. Now, she lay on the pretty bed, staring at the hangings, wishing she had not lost control.
No door at Avon would be so ill-maintained as to creak upon its hinges, but she recognised her husband's step upon the floor, and sighed, deeply.
“Dearest,” Giles said, and sat down on the bed. “I said you had a headache.”
“I was rude to Rupert,” she sighed mournfully. The rest of the family would no doubt consider it akin to kicking a puppy.
“It does him good,” Giles said. “He gets too convinced of his own cleverness, otherwise.”
His hand fell on her shoulder, and then his face appeared within her view. “They’ll all understand. I left Grandmère ringing the most tremendous peal over his head, and comparing him to Great-Uncle Rupert himself.”
“I liked your great-uncle Rupert,” Georgiana sighed, and heard Giles kick his shoes off, and the bed creak as he embarked further into it.
“Grandmère liked Great-Uncle Rupert,” Giles said, putting an arm around her. “But that’s nothing to do with it. Rupert will come and beg your pardon soon enough, never fear.”
“I don’t want him to beg my pardon,” Georgiana said, and swallowed. Giles knew what she wanted. She wanted Eleanor, and Mamma, and Lionel not to be dead. She wanted not to be surrounded by people who only mourned their deaths insofar as it made her worthy of sympathy. Rupert had only said what everyone thought, and that would be poor Eleanor’s epitaph, far more than the stone in the far-off graveyard, or the little boy at Stanyon. What did the world care, that she had loved Lord Lethbridge, and he loved her? What did they care that Theodore Frant had made her life a misery, taken the bright flower Georgiana had loved so much and pressed it into pale silence. Lady Penistone still thought it Eleanor’s own weakness, not to be able to stand up to St Erth’s cruelty that little bit longer.
Giles stroked her hair. He knew. He had gone with her, three years ago, when the scandal was still in full flow, and Georgiana’s Mamma had been in need of a recuperative holiday, and they had made their way to the same spa as Eleanor and Lethbridge, travelling as Mr and Mrs Massey.
It had been so lovely. She had spent her days with Mamma and Eleanor, and they had spent their nights as a foursome in the dancing halls and gaming parlours, and Georgiana had rested her head on Giles’s shoulder, or Eleanor’s, the two of them looking wide-eyed and sweet as Lethbridge won a fortune at E/O with the numbers they’d chosen for him. She had a pair of earrings in her jewel box which Lord Lethbridge had bought her with the winnings.
She put her face against Giles’s shoulder, and said, “Don’t ever abandon me, dearest.”
“I will never abandon you here,” Giles assured her.
“Not just here,” Georgiana sighed, and tucked herself closer.
“Never,” Giles promised, and Georgiana leaned up to kiss him.
Lucy Devenish, 1815
Lucy hadn't had a proper wedding night. She had barely had a wedding afternoon. They had wed at eleven o'clock in the morning, by a common licence obtained by George from a Bishop who had been an intimate of his father, and passed three blissful hours together before Lucy had been forced to leave the bed, and go back to her uncle’s home. She had almost danced her way there, revelling in her secret, the sheer joy of it outdoing even the knots in her stomach at the thought of the lies she was telling.
Lucy had laughed, at her first wedding. There was little laughter at her second, though it was better and more nobly attended. As she came down the aisle, on Uncle Fisher's slightly shaking arm, she marked Lord and Lady Worth, Colonel Audley leaning on his brother's arm, Aunt Fisher in a mist of confused tears, and Miss Stanton-Lacy bearing her up. On the other side of the small Embassy Chapel, the Duke of Avon wore very correct black, and held his wife's hand, with George's sister on his other side. Of the trio, only the Duchess seemed able to smile. The Duke's face was sunk in lines of grief, and Lady Barbara looked positively green. Her husband was still abed with his wound, though he had written a very correct letter, dictated to some neat writer except for the shaky postscript those who marry Alastairs must hang together, or they will assuredly hang separately.
The double line of pearls resting at Lucy’s throat chattered against each other and their old-fashioned clasp as she paced down the aisle. Lady Barbara had come while she was getting dressed, brushing off Aunt Fisher’s cringing apologies and suggestions she might leave them to be private, and proffered the pearls, lying on a velvet bed in their green leather case. "My mother left these to me, and she had them from her mother, who had them from hers, and one day I will give them to Gracie--but today, they are yours."
Aunt Fisher had duly removed the heavy gold chain that Lucy had been wearing, and shyly offered up her own pearl earrings. Lady Barbara had praised them, and said that Lucy should make sure to eat something, for she had forgotten to do so before her own wedding to Major Darracott, and nearly fallen over a footstool.
When she talked about her daughter, and gave advice, she looked almost human, instead of the godly figure Lucy had watched across all those ballrooms and salons and gardens, trying to place herself at her side. In the church she became a marble goddess again, and so was George, standing at the altar--at least until Gideon Ware nudged him, and Lucy saw his mouth move effortfully into a smile. Captain Ware had been a witness at their first wedding, taking a copy of the marriage lines for safekeeping. George had not been sure if he’d be able to attend the wedding, but there he was, coat draped tenderly over an arm bulky with bandages, and immobilised in a sling. Captain Ware’s presence at her second wedding was one of the few things that stopped her from feeling as if she was marrying a man who was more of a stranger to her than ever before, her round hand laying out Lucy Ann below his George Lionel Rupert. She’d always meant to ask him about those names.
Lying in the bed next to him, he was still a stranger. They weren’t in Judith’s house-- Lady Worth, rather, and part of Lucy, when she thought of how she’d lied to Lady Worth, the morass she’d entangled herself in, wanted never to see her again. The Duke had taken a house, where they had repaired after the ceremony for a wedding breakfast that Lucy’s aunt had pronounced most fine, in her little nervy hush of a voice, because the Alastairs scared her. All of this scared her, and she wanted it to scare Lucy too, or would have been happier if it did. Uncle Fisher had gone to speak to the Duke of her marriage settlements, and she had seen his drawn face, and known he was shocked at the way she had behaved, and afraid he would not be able to see her right.
None of that had mattered, at her first wedding, but now everything seemed to matter, in the face of the glare of notice. There had been more guests at the wedding breakfast than at the ceremony, or maybe she had merely seen more of them. The new Earl of St Erth, a connexion by obscure means, merry Captain Malvern and his daughter, who had offered congratulations in a quiet way, quite unlike her father’s voluble felicitations - even a woman whose mourning veil covered her hair entirely, who was introduced, with a little surprise, as ‘Tante Reinette’, and who squeezed their hands tenderly before going to speak to the Duke of Avon.
“Well, Louis-Justin took the field,” Lady Barbara had said to George, who had sighed deeply, and Lucy hadn’t felt able to ask more about anything, instead linking her fingers with George’s, and allowing him to lean into her side.
She supposed, stretching her feet under the covers, that she could ask about the mysterious Louis-Justin and Tante Reinette now, but she wanted to ask about something else. Talking of the battle seemed so very intrusive. He would surely speak of it in his own time, but he would hardly welcome her pressing that fresh wound on their wedding night. Finally, something came to mind.
“You seemed surprised to see Captain Carlyon,” she observed to George’s bare shoulder. Certainly, she had heard him declaring, a few days earlier, that one of the benefits of eloping had been not having to see the damn Carlyons there. “Is he not a close connexion?”
“Oh,” George said abruptly, and rolled closer towards her, reaching out to stroke her hair. “Well, not very, but my uncle married his aunt, and then my uncle died, so my mother had to go and visit his aunt if she wanted to see my cousin at all. The two families lived quite close, and so we were thrown into company.”
“But you don’t like him,” Lucy said, on surer ground.
“My cousin-- Eustace was his name-- was very close to them. Closer than he liked, I think, there was one of him, and a pack of them, all hanging together, and the Carlyons gave a dog a bad name, and then hanged him-- well, Nicky, Carlyon’s youngest brother, stabbed him, but the inquest found no case to answer. Eustace had married on his deathbed, so they didn’t inherit anything, but then Carlyon’s eldest brother married the widow. Francis, my cousin Francis, was there and went to the funeral-- Robert was a prosy bore about the whole thing, and anyway Eustace had tried to borrow some money from him, and Bab and I were both in the Peninsula-- and he says that the Carlyons didn’t murder him, but if you ever suggest there was something odd about the business, you find the nearest Carlyon leaping down your throat saying you're being offensive! As if a fellow can't worry about the death of his own cousin!" George’s face had gone set. “They didn’t like him, and they couldn’t see why anyone else would, but I did. He was a little like Bab, and--” He sighed. “Well. He deserved better than that, and he’d have been boiling furious at the thought of his estate with Lord Carlyon. I hope the roof falls in on his head.” He swallowed. “Eustace taught Harry to fish.”
George had insisted Harry would like Lucy, and there, at least, she had felt comfortable agreeing. He had sworn that all of them would like her, that Robert would approve her respectability, that Harry would love her, that Barbara would welcome her as a sister. She had doubted Lord Vidal and Lady Barbara, though silently, for she didn’t want to upset George, remind him of all the disadvantages he would accrue by a marriage to her. Now she knew that two parts would never come to pass, and as to the third--she doubted Lady Barbara had ever felt the lack of a sister.
Now, Lucy kissed him, very softly, and pressed against him, and George pressed a kiss into her hair.
“I’m sorry, dearest,” he sighed, adjusting his hold on her. “Not a happy wedding night.”
“I have you,” Lucy said. She’d thought she wouldn’t, fumbled bandages as she bent over wounded men, thinking that he might lie under some other woman’s hands. And if he did, and if he died there, no one but Gideon Ware would ever know what they had been to each other, and there was no chance of a child. She did have him now, though, and have him publicly - and that was worth all the awkward nights, the silences, as long as he still loved her.
She had tried so hard not to doubt that he still loved her. She almost believed it now, when he had come to her after the battle, in all his dirt, and presented her to his grandfather like a trophy, while the old man’s seamed face flexed with grief. It was a future she’d never been able to compass, being Lady George, a member of the Alastairs, instead of Lucy, who loved him.
The bed creaked as George shifted. If Lucy concentrated, she could hear what was happening elsewhere, footsteps passing swiftly outside. It reminded her that she and George weren’t alone.
After her first wedding, she probably wouldn’t have noticed if a cannon had exploded outside the door.
“The tenants have Edington until Michaelmas next year,” George said abruptly. “I can give them notice to quit, if you want. There shouldn’t be work needed.”
“Edington?” Lucy asked.
“It was my parents’ house,” George said, “We were born there, and we lived there until they died. It wasn’t under the entail, and they left it to me. Harry got the hunting box-- but my mother died there.”
Lucy sorted through the clauses, and tried to remember what he’d told her about his childhood, about the setting, instead of the people - his daring mother, going from the hunting field to the dancing floor and arguing politics among men, and his easy-going father, who had nonetheless once duelled, and left a bullet in his man.
Aunt Fisher had been terribly shocked at that story.
“In Somerset?” she asked.
“Yes,” George said dreamily. “On the Polden Hills, ten miles from the sea. There’s a park, and a little village. My mother had a salon that looked over the park. I once put a cricket ball through the window, and she threw it back and knocked the wicket off.” He stopped, looking down at her face. “You can decorate it as you like, of course. We’ve had tenants in, and it isn’t-- my aunt had Mamma’s salon redecorated. She said Father was making it a shrine, and it wasn’t healthy. Some of the art is in storage, but you needn’t put it up if you don’t like it.”
“You like it, though,” Lucy said, heart clenching.”The house.”
“It isn’t where they died, you see,” George said, “Not like-- the hunting box, and the London house, and here for Harry. They lived there, all of them, and they were happy.”
“We can live there,” Lucy said, and kissed him. “We can live there, and be happy.”
She couldn’t mentally place herself, in the house, not yet, but she could place herself in George’s arms, imagine curly-haired children playing cricket on a lawn, their father returning their bowling while she watched, a misty place of pleasure behind her.
“We will,” George said firmly, and kissed her again.